Sentencing Project releases "Ending Mass Incarceration: Safety Beyond Sentencing"

The Sentencing Project released this new ten-page report titled "Ending Mass Incarceration: Safety Beyond Sentencing."  Here is how it gets started

After 50 years of mass incarceration, the United States faces a reckoning.  While crime is far below its peak in the early 1990s, the country continues to struggle with an unacceptable amount of gun violence.  Meanwhile, the drug war harms too many Americans and has failed to prevent fatal overdoses from reaching an all-time high. A great imbalance in our national approach to public safety, one that relies too heavily on the criminal legal system, has produced excessive levels of punishment and a diversion of resources from investments that would strengthen the capacity of families and communities to address the circumstances that contribute to crime.

This report offers five recommendations for policymakers and community members to potentially improve safety without deepening our reliance on extreme sentencing:

• Implement community safety solutions – Community-based interventions such as violence interruption programs and changes to the built environment are a promising approach to decreasing violence without incarceration.

• Transform crisis response – Shifting responses to people in crisis away from police toward trained community-based responders has the potential to reduce police shootings, improve safety, and decrease incarceration.

• Reduce unnecessary justice involvement - Ending unnecessary police contact and court involvement by decriminalizing and diverting many offenses can improve safety.

• End the drug war – Shifting away from criminalizing people who use drugs toward public health solutions can improve public health and safety.

• Strengthen opportunities for youth – Interventions like summer employment opportunities and training youth in effective decision-making skills are a promising means of reducing criminal legal involvement.